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INTRODUCTION
Plotting the Hyperbola of Deception
    An increased liberalism in the definition of “fact” can have grave
repercussions, while the idea that truth is concealed and even
perverted by the processes that are meant to establish it makes
excellent sense.
    â€”Paul Feyerabend,
Against Method
(1975)
    On January 30, 1995, not long after O.J. Simpson had released
I Want to Tell You
, the book he hoped would clear his name, the tabloid television show
Hard Copy
revealed that they had subjected the double murder suspect to a lie detector test. The former football star had recorded himself on tape, reading aloud various passages from his book: “I want to state unequivocally that I did not commit these horrible crimes.” 1
Hard Copy
hired lie detector expert Ernie Rizzo to use a “Psychological Stress Evaluator” to subject Simpson’s voice to stress analysis. According to the show’s “Hollywood Reporter,” Diane Dimond, the test could separate “fact from fiction.” Used by the police, the military, and big business, the instrument had been shown to be “95 percent accurate.” As a result of Rizzo’s analysis, he concluded that Simpson was “one hundred percent deceitful … one hundred percent lying.” 2 One week after
Hard Copy’s
deception test, supermarket tabloid newspaper the
Globe
subjected the same tape recording of Simpson’s voice to “Verimetrics,” a hightech lie detector favored by police investigators. 3 But this time Jack Harwood, a “Veteran investigator,” proclaimed Simpson “absolutely truthful,” noting that the “lie test shows O.J. didn’t do it!”
    One type of lie detector, identical statements from a single suspect, and two equally emphatic yet contradictory verdicts. When Simpson said, “I would take a bullet for Nicole,” Harwood claimed, “the former football hero was being completely honest,” while according to Rizzo he was “absolutely lying.” How can two experts both claim scientific validity for their respective instruments, analyze the same material, and reach completely different conclusions?
    Early histories of the lie detector celebrated the many famous and infamous cases in which it had been used during the twentieth century. 4 More recent studies have either challenged the instrument’s scientific status, or questioned its legitimacy on grounds that this practice constitutes an assault on civil liberties. 5 David Lykken was one of the first psychologists to dispute claims about the machine, arguing, “the lie detector has no more place in the courts or in business than a psychic or tarot cards.” 6 According to Lykken, by 1980 more than one million lie detector tests were performed annually in the United States. 7
    The classic polygraph examination involves simultaneously measuring a suspect’s blood pressure, breathing rate, and electrical skin conductance as a series of questions that require yes or no answers are asked. But the person can also be subjected to more covert scrutiny: “behavior symptoms” are observed before and after the test is performed; cameras behind two-way mirrors may record gestures and nuances of expression. Talkativeness and enthusiasm may be noted, to be incorporated into the examiner’s final assessment of truth or deception. It seems that no lie detector examination takes place under “objective” scientific conditions divorced from the wider social context. And symbols lend insight into the values that underscore the lie detector test. What better emblem of masculine professional power than the
briefcase
, that mandatory accessory of every polygrapher? From the black briefcase comes the
chart
, at once a graphic calculus of guilt and a sacred scroll inscribed with the truth. Consider also the
chair
, a seat for the sovereign subject with whom no eye contact must be made, but also